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You should always read the fine print. Usually, this is a precaution we take to protect ourselves. But in some cases, knowing exactly what you’ve signed up for can help you figure out how to exploit the system…
Redditors have recently been recalling the biggest loopholes that they’ve ever taken advantage of, so we’ve gathered their most amusing tales below. From getting a mountain of free lava cakes to staying on a former employer's health insurance for years, enjoy reading about the clever ways these people gamed the system. And be sure to upvote the hacks that you would have loved to figure out too!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
When my son was in high school, he went to one that was connected to the community college. Starting in 10th grade, he could take college classes, so he chose classes whose credits would apply to both high school graduation and an associate degree. He also favored accelerated 7-week courses. He graduated high school with an associate degree and transferred 49 credits to his 4 year university.
#2
When I was in high school, I accidently found a soda machine that dispensed free grape soda. I hit the button randomly while passing by, and a grape soda came out. I did it again the next day just to see and more free grape soda. It must have been busted or some sort of strange glitch. For the entire school year, I would pass by and hit grape on my way home and get a free grape soda. I wasn't stupid about it either. I kept that s**t to myself. I wasn't about to ruin my free grape soda by telling everyone.
#3
It's pretty minor, but Fuddrucker's kid's hamburger meal was less than half the price of the regular burger combo, so I'd just buy two kid's burgers and fries and end up with more food than if I'd gotten the regular burger meal. And I'd get two cookies.
#4
This loophole I learned from someone else on reddit but i’ll share it for those who may not know: If you have a planet fitness plan and can’t cancel it online, change your home gym to a random one in California. Then you can cancel it online!
Sue User 3 months ago
All , USA Pandas. Contact your congress men/ women ask them to support " click to cancel". The FTC us trying to chabge the rule to say " however easy it was to subscribe, it must be just as easy to cancel". But it just keep getting put off. or better yet, contact your attornny general office. They can help/ tell who can help, in all dorts if these matters. Time to get the services we pay for by using them, not just " go vote" and then never thinking about what they are doing for another 2 years.
#5
Got fired two weeks after HR got fired. They never cancelled my health insurance. That was 2001.
#6
When my brother and I lived together, he worked for a large chain restaurant. They had a policy where if someone called in an order for pickup and didn't pick it up by closing time, it was free game for the employees to take home. Occasionally, I would call in orders for pickup, never pick it up, and he'd just take it home for us. I'm not proud of it. We were both broke af at the time, and most days, it was the only food we could get
EDIT: I'm no longer broke so whenever I buy food from this place I make sure to leave a heavy tip, I guess as a thank you to the chain for keeping me alive but mostly to ease my guilt.
María Hermida 3 months ago
Don't feel so sorry for them. If your brother was working but he still couldn't afford food, he was being paid peanuts instead of a decent salary.
#7
I used to bartend and would have to pay for parking, either on the street (which was a pain since I would have to re-up in the middle of my shift and often forgot), or in a paid parking lot.
Found a parking garage that used a ticket machine on the way in, but had you pay a person on the way out. 90% of the time there would be no one working late night when I left work, so I scored free parking for a few years.
Jrog 3 months ago (edited)
This is common in my city's outskirt parkings. Parking entry is free before 7 AM and after 8 PM. People feel smart thinking they are taking advantage of a loophole... while the city did this on purpose to move traffic outside of peak hours and motivate people to use parkings instead of entering the city by car.
#8
I was leaving an abusive ex, and he had made me put our apartment only in my name. I was gonna have to pay a bunch of money to break the lease. Until I looked at it and realized to my had put the wrong year for the lease ending. They had done the year before, so legally my lease was over and I had technically been month to month. The manager was super pissed when I pointed this out, and that I did not have to pay any lease break fee or additional rent past my submitted move out date. They tried to hit me with a bunch of maintenance and cleaning fees after. But I had picture proof the place was in the exact condition I’d rented it in. So they informed me I would never be able to rent at any of their properties again. Which was super dumb. I’ve always been a really great tenant anywhere I’ve rented and I was not going to let them do anything legally that could f**k me over. Buuut that whole lease thing was a huge relief and very helpful during the worst time of my life.
#9
When I was a struggling single Mom there was a well known rewards program that ran a promotion that you would get 3 points for every “review” posted on business listed on a business directory website.
I wrote reviews non stop for months, always gave 5 stars if it was somewhere I hadn’t been (figured the business owners would be happy with that) , and everywhere I did go I wrote an honest review. I worked my way through the alphabet and after a few months I was able to buy my son a PlayStation for Christmas with the points.
#10
Around 2008, the US Mint was trying to get more people to use the new dollar coins. You could buy some via their website and they would ship them to you for free. Those purchases would earn you points on your credit card.
I bought $10,000 worth of coins, then took those coins to the bank so I could pay my $10,000 bill. I would then buy another $10,000 and repeat. A few hundred thousand air miles later and I’m still using those free miles in 2024.
They eventually did close the loophole, but some people with huge lines of credit were able to get millions of free air miles.
#11
When lava cakes first rolled out on the dominos app, rather than selling them only in two packs as they do now, there was a drop down picklist where you could select the specific number of cakes you wanted. For whatever reason, if you selected 1 cake only, it was added to your cart with no price ($0.00). You could then go into the cart and change the quantity of that $0 lava cake to whatever number you wanted.
I was worried at first that I'd get found out so I would only order 1. Then I got bold and ordered two, and they came just as they do now, two in a pack. No charge. I decided to push it one time and ordered 8 lava cakes with just two medium pizzas. Total bill was $16. Thought for sure someone at the store would realize something was wrong sending out two pizzas and 8 cakes for $16. Nope, minimum wage employees don't give a f**k, they just see the order and fill it.
After that I was like the Don of crunch cakes, you want a crunch cake? You GOT one. I must have gotten hundreds of those things over the course of 3-4 months. Eventually I knew it would come to an end. I was going to write to dominoes in hopes they'd like give me a gift card or something for exposing the glitch, but my gf at the time was like dude, don't blow your cover, they'll just fix it and not give you anything, so I didn't.
Less than a month later they patched the problem, and I still regret not being the whistleblower and maybe getting some free pizza.
As a totally random button on this story, years later I was helping my company develop their website, and I flew to Detroit to work directly with the developer. At lunch on the first day we were talking shop, and the dev told me one of their claims to fame was developing the Dominoes pizza tracker. I was like, wait, did you just do the tracker or the whole site? Turns out they did the whole site, the app, and tracker! I mentioned my lava cake scheme and the dev almost fell out of his chair, he was like "I totally remember that issue and patching it!", he was floored I had the inside scoop on that site glitch he assumed nobody knew about.
#12
I used my college ID nearly until my 40s for discounts. A few years back, a cashier at a local hardware store gave me a "really" look that cut right to my soul which made me stop using it.
#13
I used to fish a lot. WalMart guaranteed their trolling motor batteries for 12 months to charge to I think 90%. So I bought 3 batteries for $125 each and kept the receipt. At month 11 I’d go in and have them tested and without fail they’d be in the 80% range and I’d get new batteries with new 12 month warranties, that’s how they wrote the policy. Finally in year 6 they gave me my new batteries with a 30 day warranty. But I got 7 years of new batteries and used the final 3 for 3 years.
#14
There used to be a glitch in my Domino's app that would give free extra cheese as long as you waited until it asked if you wanted it. If you added it yourself it would charge you. It worked for a few years until I got a new phone.
#15
It was a multi step process but damn it felt good. A local grocer had coupons for $1.00 off a 32oz Gatorade, branded by Gatorade, so they worked at multiple retailers. I clipped a bunch of them.
Then I went to Walmart down the street and loaded my cart with as many gatorades as coupons. At the register, the cashier was baffled I was buying so many gatorades (I was in high school). She scanned all my gatorades and the total was something like 68 dollars. Then I had her apply a price match to Meijer’s price, something like .88 cents each, bringing the total down a bit. But it doesn’t stop there.
Then I had her scan all of my coupons (deducting a dollar for each Gatorade in my cart). The look on her face was hilarious, as my ‘total’ went lower and lower each scan of a coupon, eventually passing zero and showing a negative value. After ringing them all up, she got smug and said, “I bet you think you’re pretty smart, getting all of these for free”. I looked at the total on the screen, then at her, and said “oh no, not free. I actually think I have some change coming back”. Her jaw hit the floor as she called her manager and was told, indeed, that she had to also shell ~$8 out of the register and hand it to me. What a feeling that was. [Proof of Gatorades](https://imgur.com/a/PTQTiAg).
#16
When I was studying I used to take the train home almost every weekend. There used to be a perk with the first class ticket that you could rebook the train if you missed it in a 24 hour window after it departed. I figured that the only way they would know if I missed the train was that if they scanned my ticket. So I just put on something that made me look like I belong and then I pretended to be asleep when the conductor came to check the tickets. This worked almost always so I had two tickets, one for each direction that I just rebooked into the next week. The first class had single seating, free coffee, biscuits, oj and water. It was almost empty usually so very nice and quier, the train otherwise was usually aleays booked near full but people didn’t want to pay the 50% more for the first class. I think I got ”woken up” like 5 times during the 3 years I studied so I paid about 320€ for about 100 first class trips on those trains. I guess they realized people were doing this and it was changed as an optional addon to the ticket and had to be rebooked before departure.
#17
I worked for an organization that ordered large amounts of groceries every week for their group activities from a major supermarket.
There was a place to put in your loyalty card number so I just used mine.
Not only did I get heaps of points to use in shopping there, no one noticed it until about five years after I left.
Edit:
- I wasn't a supermarket employee or other insider exploiting my employer. We were a totally unrelated business who bought from them.
- When I was tasked with setting up the account to purchase online there was a form to fill out. My business didn't have a loyalty card and wasn't interested in gettiing one. So I just used mine. It was a set and forget type of thing. The supermarket also had, in addition to our business landline, my mobile number and the delivery people would contact me directly if they had any problem at 6:30am when they brought the stuff.
- I don't really know if anyone ever noticed it or not. Probably either (a) they changed their supplier or (b) someone else taking care of the account put in their number instead (I tend towards option b). They didn't ask for the points "back" because they hadn't been interested in them in the first place.
- For years I also kept getting calls from various suppliers who somehow still had my mobile number - I kept redirecting them to the office and telling them I didn't work there any more. It hasn't happened for a while now.
Green Tree 3 months ago
On yhe flip loyalty card purchases usually include sale discounts so the employer business probably got hundreds if not thousands of saved dollars over all those orders
#18
This isn't exactly a loophole, it's more an unknown exploit.
In the UK if you work for a large business they have to spend 0.5% of the salary bill for the Apprenticeship Levy. They need to spend this money within three years or it's forfeited to the government.
One of the "apprenticeships" you can do is level 7. These are the level of a masters degrees. I got a £25k MBA for free, paid by my employer with zero strings attached.
May 3 months ago (edited)
Where I live it's highly advertised, that's why so many students go on apprenticeships. Indeed, the years of study are fully paid, plus you get a quite decent salary, and yeah, no strings attached once the contract is finished. The only thing is that rather than doing a 6 months traditional internships, apprenticeships run a bit longer like 1 to 2 years, so it's best suited for students who quite know the branch where they'd like to work. Also students who do the 2 days study + 3 days working / week need to be quite organised so most students tend to choose the 6 months studying + 6 months working formula.
#19
I used to work at Staples many years ago and every item that we sell has a status. For example, A status stands for active, C status stands for clearance and F status stands for final. For whatever reason, when an item goes to F status, the price drops DRAMATICALLY. I'm talking a desk that was $250 would ring up for $8.50. Also, because it was no longer an active item, that meant it was no longer on display on the sales floor so anything that would not sell would just sit in the back unnoticed. I used to run a report in our system constantly and it would list everything that our location had in stock under F status. There was a time when like 1/3 of my furniture at home was F status items and I paid probably $50 total for it all. Got my first DSLR (with lens) for $250 (regular price was over a grand). It was a great time to be alive.
#20
Signed up for a free trial on Audible, when I went to cancel it offered me a free credit to stay. Took the free credit, went to cancel again and offered another free credit to stay. Got about 25 credits in one day before I chickened out and officially cancelled.
Jess Smith 3 months ago
Rebecca: Audible offered it. They might not have meant to offer it, but it didn't involve hacking the system and if Audible let that loophole in, oh well.
#21
Back in the days when Groupon was new and so there were real deals to be had, I purchased a one for a free sub from a big sandwich chain.
The process for redemption was to order your sandwich in line like normal, and at the point where you'd pay you held up your phone and the employee at the register would click the redeeem button on your phone, then comp the sandwich.
I would pull up the Groupon, turn off cellular data and then let the employee "redeem" the Groupon.
As soon as they had done so and I walked out with my food, I would uninstall and reinstall the Groupon app. This prevented it from simply relaying the redemption the next time data was available.
I did this nearly every day until the Groupon expired. Usually for a couple weeks. I bought the Groupon every time it showed up, usually every other month.
Probably over a hundred free subs. Such times, the late naughts.
Featherytoad 3 months ago (edited)
I used to order 3 or 4 pizzas from Schwans every month when they still had their trucks running where I live, and before it became Yelloh and the quality went to s**t. They always had 25% to 35% off plus free delivery for new customer orders. I learned that they verified accounts from email addresses, not phone numbers. I realized if I created a new email account, and a new account with Schwans/Yelloh, they always thought I was a new customer, and I always got the 25 to 35 percent off.
#22
In college I was dating this girl who worked at the bookstore, which had an ATM.
She texted me informing me the ATM was giving out $20 bills instead of $5s, so if you withdrew $15 it’d give you $60.
I and my friends and like 7 other people who happened to find out made quite a bit of money that day. I only made a few hundred because I was broke at the time and only had so much to withdraw.
Some people were there for a *long* time though. Everyone was super respectful about it, they’d withdraw, get their $60, and then move to the back of the line and do it again. Not one argument about hurrying up or anyone trying to double withdraw.
Just broke college kids living in harmony, stealing from a bank. Was beautiful.
No one got in trouble. We were bugging for a while. The machine was completely cleaned out of $20s by the time the ATM people came. Girl I was dating said she heard them say it was well over 10k.
#23
Back in university when windows 10 was new they offered free licenses for students. They used a third party website that didn't have actual limits and even had a dropdown menu to select the amount of licenses you want. I think I got 10 licenses that way but If I wanted I could've gotten hundreds.
and they were legit windows 10 education license codes and not tied to any account.
Derek Yeung 3 months ago
That was intentional, trying to get everyone on a Secured Operating System. Microsoft knowingly allow all previous Windows, including Priate ones to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for Free.
#24
Subway’s Chicken Bacon Ranch is cheaper if you just order a Chicken Breast Sandwich, Add Bacon, and Ranch instead of ordering it by its marketed name.
Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 3 months ago
I do this in Burger King - their motto is "have it your way" so I order 2 kids burgers dressed like whoppers and end up with a meal just as filling and tasty for less than half the cost.
#25
A few years ago, Leafly sent out a "gift code" for $50 on a specific CBD/THC company's site. I realized that, rather than having a single-use code locked to your email (or per IP, computer, address, or whatever) like they usually did, it generated a new code every time you clicked the link from the email. That is to say, none of that "this code has already been used" nonsense.
At that time, the majority of their products were under $50, and they offered free shipping on orders over $25, lol.
So over the next 3 months, I "bought" thousands of dollars worth of gummies, oils, lotions, and other health/wellness products...all for the low low price of $0.
#26
I had found out and abused the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond's had a birthday reward loophole, I essentially had created multiple BBB accounts, set the birthday to next day, and had $5 birthday giftcard rewards roll in on the next day. It also turned out you were able to stack them together into one account, so I cashed out about $600 worth of them to buy my mom expensive kitchen appliances. Ninja Creami and Ninja Smart Foodi, great products, use them almost everyday.
#27
I remember a co-worker telling me about a loophole he found. There was some promotion with a bank where every transaction you made you'd receive 5 reward points. So he wrote a script that paid for all these transactions in 1 cent iterations and he'd get 5 points for each cent. So for example if he had a $100 bill, he'd pay in 10,000 1 cent transactions and get 50,000 points. They found out soon after but let him keep the points he accumulated.
#28
When I worked at Petco I hooked people up for free treats. There was a $2 bag of sample treats with a coupon off for $2 (supposed to be off your next large bag)
One day I accidentally scanned it as the UPC and coupon were side by side. I started doing that more and gave away treats lol.
Rae H 3 months ago
I used to work there too. It was the instinct freeze dried samples. At the time I would use my 40% off employee discount. Got the treats for $1.20 and saved the $2 off coupons from the package. I would then wait for the big bags to go on sale. They would sometimes go BOGO. They were $10, but then I’d get 40% off again. So it would bring the total down to $6. Then I’d use 2 $2 off coupons. So I really only paid a total of $2 for the big bags. Then my dog started to get fat. So I stopped, but passed on my knowledge to my coworkers.
#29
I got a hefty ($300+) parking ticket out of state; the officer wrote down the correct license plate number, make, model, and color, but used an incorrect state abbreviation. I fought it and won.
#30
Not too exciting but the marcos pizza in our area had a “free cheesybread” coupon when i was in highschool, you got a survey on the receipt and if you filled it out you got a free cheesybread and you didn’t have to buy anything else. we saw that they still put the receipt with the survey with the free cheesybread. my ex and i abused that at least once a week until they got rid of it lol.
What’s the biggest loophole you’ve ever exploited?
arthbach 3 months ago (edited)
Some of these are genuine loop holes. The vast majority are simply people stealing, and feeling smug about it.
Lee Stone 3 months ago
I'm not sure I see much of a difference? A loophole is by definition something unintended that someone exploits to their benefit. Legal loopholes allow people to escape punishment for otherwise punishable behavior, tax loopholes allow people to avoid paying taxes they would otherwise need to pay. How are any of the things described here any different?
Load More Replies...
Michael Largey 3 months ago
My wife and I were booking a train trip in Canada. She was slightly over the Senior Citizen age, so she got a discount. I was slightly under, so I didn't. But because I was "escorting a senior citizen", I rode for absolutely free. I try not to remind my wife of this more than twice a week.
Nimitz 3 months ago (edited)
I worked for an oil company as a traveling IT guy for 3 years. Employees who worked there got a permanent 15x rewards points put on their personal cards if they linked it to their work email. They gave me a giant gas guzzling company truck and I drove about 400+ km every day. It came with a company credit card billed to my team. My boss didn't even look at the numbers. I filled up with premium every time, got car washes, oil changes every 5,000 km, tire balances, windshield wipers, every vehicle product and service we sold at our gas stations I bought for that truck. Basically every day I'd get $20-30 worth of points on my card. The kicker? The points were good for anything in the store, including prepaid credit cards. I felt no guilt because it was an evil oil company and really I was just keeping my work vehicle in good condition.
arthbach 3 months ago (edited)
Some of these are genuine loop holes. The vast majority are simply people stealing, and feeling smug about it.
Lee Stone 3 months ago
I'm not sure I see much of a difference? A loophole is by definition something unintended that someone exploits to their benefit. Legal loopholes allow people to escape punishment for otherwise punishable behavior, tax loopholes allow people to avoid paying taxes they would otherwise need to pay. How are any of the things described here any different?
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 3 months ago
My wife and I were booking a train trip in Canada. She was slightly over the Senior Citizen age, so she got a discount. I was slightly under, so I didn't. But because I was "escorting a senior citizen", I rode for absolutely free. I try not to remind my wife of this more than twice a week.
Nimitz 3 months ago (edited)
I worked for an oil company as a traveling IT guy for 3 years. Employees who worked there got a permanent 15x rewards points put on their personal cards if they linked it to their work email. They gave me a giant gas guzzling company truck and I drove about 400+ km every day. It came with a company credit card billed to my team. My boss didn't even look at the numbers. I filled up with premium every time, got car washes, oil changes every 5,000 km, tire balances, windshield wipers, every vehicle product and service we sold at our gas stations I bought for that truck. Basically every day I'd get $20-30 worth of points on my card. The kicker? The points were good for anything in the store, including prepaid credit cards. I felt no guilt because it was an evil oil company and really I was just keeping my work vehicle in good condition.
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